Class - The Architectural Beauty of Eden
OrthoAnalytika
From Eden to the ChurchBeauty, Architecture, and the Space Where God Dwells Christian architecture is not primarily about style or preference. It is about ordering space so that human beings learn how to dwell with God. The Church building is Eden remembered and anticipated—a place where heaven and earth meet, so that God’s people can be formed and then sent back into the world. Key Biblical Insights 1. Eden Was God’s Dwelling Place Eden is first described not as humanity’s home, but as God’s planted garden—a place of divine presence, beauty, and order. Genesis...
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Homily - The Green Hand of Hell
OrthoAnalytika
Luke 17:12-19; The Grateful Leper I've included my notes, but I didn't follow them, choosing instead to offer a meditation on the "go show yourself to the priest" part of the Levitical command and noting how we do the same - and will all do the same one day at the Great Judgment. Homily: Healing, Vision, and the Mercy of God Onee of the things that sometimes gives people pause—especially when they encounter it for the first time—comes from the Book of Needs, in the prayers the priest offers for those who are sick. If you have ever been present for these prayers, you may have...
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Class: The Beauty of Creation and the Shape of Reality
OrthoAnalytika
Beauty in Orthodoxy: Architecture I The Beauty of Creation and the Shape of Reality In this class, the first in a series on "Orthodox Beauty in Architecture," Father Anthony explores beauty not as decoration or subjective taste, but as a theological category that reveals God, shapes human perception, and defines humanity’s priestly vocation within creation. Drawing extensively on Archbishop Job of Telmessos’ work on creation as icon, he traces a single arc from Genesis through Christ to Eucharist and sacred space, showing how the Fall begins with distorted vision and how repentance...
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Homily - Repent and Burn (in a good way)
OrthoAnalytika
Homily: The Sunday after Theophany Hebrews 13:7–16; Matthew 4:12–17 This homily explores repentance as the doorway from darkness into light, and from spiritual novelty into mature faithfulness. Rooted in Hebrews and the Gospel proclamation after Theophany, it calls Christians to become not sparks of passing enthusiasm, but enduring flames shaped by grace, sacrifice, and hope in the coming Kingdom. ---- Today’s Scripture readings give us three interrelated truths—three movements in the life of salvation and theosis. First: darkness and light. Second: repentance as the way from...
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Homily - Repent, Transcend Boredom, and Change the World
OrthoAnalytika
Homily – Repent… and Change the World (Embrace Boredom) Sunday before Theophany 2 Timothy 4:5–8; St. Mark 1:1–8 This is the Sunday before Theophany, when the Church sets before us St. John the Baptist and his ministry of repentance—how he prepared the world to receive the God-man, Jesus Christ. John was the son of the priest Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth, the cousin of the Mother of God. When Mary visited Elizabeth during her pregnancy, John leapt in his mother’s womb. But what we sometimes forget is what followed. While Zachariah was serving in the Temple, the angel...
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Homily - Our Herodic Responses to Christ
OrthoAnalytika
Homily for the Sunday after Nativity The Child Christ in the World—and in Our Hearts Gospel: St. Matthew 2:13–23 [Retelling the Lesson] God humbles Himself to save mankind. He leaves His rightful inheritance as God and becomes man, born as a child in Bethlehem. And how does the world receive Him? Is He born in a temple? In a palace? Places that might seem fitting for the Ruler of the Ages? No—He is laid in a manger, in a stable. And even that is not the worst of it. When the leaders of the day learn of His birth, do they submit to Him? Do they nurture and protect Him so that He may...
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Homily - The Name of Jesus
OrthoAnalytika
St. Matthew 1:1-25 Why was the Son of God commanded to be named Jesus—the New Joshua? In this Advent reflection, Fr. Anthony shows how Christ fulfills Israel’s story by conquering sin and death, and calls us to repentance so that we may enter the victory He has already won. --- Homily on the Name of Jesus Sunday before the Nativity In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “They named Him Jesus, because He would deliver His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) Names matter in Scripture. They are never accidental. A name reveals identity, vocation,...
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Homily - The Pilgrimage to Peace
OrthoAnalytika
Fr. Anthony preaches on three types of pilgrimage and how they work towards our salvation.
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Homily - Do You Want to Be Healed? Letting God Rewrite the Story
OrthoAnalytika
Do You Want to Be Healed? Letting God Rewrite the Story Ephesians 8:5-19 Today, Fr. Anthony reflects on how the deepest obstacles to healing are often the stories we tell ourselves to justify, protect, and control our lives. Drawing on the Prophet Isaiah, the Gospel parables of the banquet, and the power of silence before God, he explores how true healing begins when we let go of our fallen narratives and allow Christ to reconstruct our story through humility, prayer, and repentance. The path of peace is not found in domination or self-justification, but in stillness at the feet of the Lord...
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Homily: Recovering Apostolic Virtue in an Age of Contempt
OrthoAnalytika
I Corinthians 4:9-16 St. John 1:35-51 In this homily for the Feast of St. Andrew, Fr. Anthony contrasts the world’s definition of success with the apostolic witness of sacrifice, humility, and courageous love. Drawing on St. Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians, he calls Christians to recover the reverence due to bishops and spiritual fathers, to reject the corrosive logic of social media, and to return to the ascetical path that forms us for theosis. St. Andrew and St. Paul's lives reveals that true honor is found not in comfort or acclaim but in following Christ wherever He leads —...
info_outlineSt. Luke 8:5-15. In today's homily, Fr. Anthony speaks about how a marriage should function in an Orthodox context and how that translates to our life in the Church. Enjoy the show!
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Here's the homily I planned on giving before I called an audible.
Homily Notes: Tending the Garden of our Souls
St. Luke 8:5-15: The Gospel of the Sower
“Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride?
Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride?
Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride?”
“Have you accepted Christ?
Have you accepted Christ?
Have you accepted Christ?”
Our affirmation of these questions before our baptism, the sacramental participation that followed, and the fact that we are here today means that we are Christians. We have rejected the way of the world – which is ruled by Satan – and have become part of the New Humanity that is preparing to inherit the New World; a world that is uncorrupted by Satan and the sins of the Old Humanity.
To move away from eschatological and theological terms into the beautiful metaphors Christ gave us in today’s parable: the seed of perfection (Christ Himself!) has been planted in our souls.
A seed is a miraculous thing; it contains all the information needed for the growing of a perfect plant. The DNA is all there. A wheat seed has everything needed to grow up to be a perfect stalk of wheat. More amazingly, a small acorn can grow into an enormous tree. The seed of Christ that has been planted in our souls is jut like that: we have been given everything we need – all the information – to grow into perfect men and women, into saints, into little Christ’s… to grow into the kind of peaceful, loving, and productive humans we were conceived and born to become. The perfect seed is within our souls.
But is that enough? We have all planted many seeds in our lifetime. Good seeds. Good soil. And yet we know that if we are not careful, we will still end up with a terrible harvest of weeds and brambles.
Why? How does this happen?
We live in a world that is full of loose spores. The winds are full of the world’s little seeds. They, too, carry all the potential of full growth within themselves. At some point, some of these spores are bound to find their way into our gardens … and into the soil of our souls.
The corruption of our gardens may begin through inattention – a lack of what we call “nepsis” – but that doesn’t explain why we end up with a bumper crop of thistles and thorns, leaving the seed we originally planted weak or even completely dead. How did it happen? It certainly wasn’t the seed. And it wasn’t just that we weren’t paying attention – we always notice when something has changed in our gardens and in our lives.
It happened because we didn’t bother with the difficult work of weeding.
Weeding is such a judgmental term – it assumes a discernment that we have all but forgotten. It requires, for instance, the realization, that Church on Sunday is more important than sports or sleeping in; that Feast Days are even more worthy ways to spend vacation days than trips to the beach; that spending a few minutes in prayer is worth the sacrifice of a few minutes of facebook or television; and that chastity is better in every respect than the transitory joy of serial monogamy, pornography, and adultery.
New gardeners can’t tell a beautiful weed from beanstalk; they need to learn. We also need to learn. We need to realize
1. That there are such things as weeds;
2. That they are dangerous threats to our souls, our families, and our communities; and
3. That it is our responsibility as human beings (God’s imagers on this earth; the New Humans!) to pull them out.
Terrible and noxious things have made their way into our souls. We don’t like to call them weeds because some of them are pretty and it sounds so judgmental. But as Christ says, you know a plant by its fruit;vand the plants of this world may look nice for a while, but their fruit is death and damnation (see Luke 6:44).
The Tree of the Cross is the plant that rises from the well-tended garden of the Christian soul, and its fruit is eternal life.